Sweder – I understand your brother’s affinity for a nation whose doctors saved his life. I’d be trumpeting their ways too.

The influence and help of the French in the War of Independence can’t be overstated. Without them, we’d all be speaking with British accents. It’s not by accident that Lafayette is honored directly across from the White House:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lafayette+park+washington,+dc&sll=37.509726,-95.712891&sspn=31.259995,79.101563&ie=UTF8&ll=38.899483,-77.037206&spn=0.007531,0.019312&z=16

And without Pierre L’Enfant’s genius in laying out our capital city, it would probably resemble the maze of winding, little streets in Lower Manhattan.He wanted boulevards, a la Paris, for grand parades; I think he thought our presidents might be more monarchial or majestic. For whatever reason, the District is laid out beautifully and by statute, no building can be taller than the dome of the Capitol. All eyes lead to it. (He is honored with a plaza)

Bit of trivia – Constitution Avenue used to be a canal but was paved over in the 19th C because mosquitos loved it in the hot weather and transmitted malaria.

Thanks again to both of you for a lovely discussion. I’ll just sit back and read for a while.

Ella – I agree with you that alienation of the young is dangerous — in this country the disillusionment of many young Muslims brought us the mindless violence of 7/7, and now the frustration of the manufacturing unemployed has given us elected representatives from the BNP.

It’s hard to square the widespread acclaim we give to America’s new dawn with our own sunset embrace of fascism. The two stories just don’t add up, but anger is an unpredictable and dangerous emotion, even within a once-rational democracy.

It’ll be interesting for you on your planned return to Washington to witness how (or if) the city has changed under the new administration. As for Brown’s promise to facilitate sweeping constitutional change and the wiping away of frivolously obstructive Parliamentary anachronisms — please forgive me if I retch, recalling Tony Blair’s finally unfulfilled promises to do the same back in 1997. This is exactly where New Labour came in, and frankly they have lost sight of why they govern. The likely alternatives are worse, but it’s difficult to gain enthusiasm for the re-emergence of such long-misplaced reforming zeal.

Similarly, much as I do believe in the merits of Proportional Representation, in implementing PR it’s inevitable that this would give us BNP jackbooters in the Wetminster Parliament as well. And, call me a cynic, but it seems uncanny how Gordon Brown is suddenly re-embracing the idea now, exactly when the prospect of general election annihilation for Labour under the existing system once again falls certain.

I embarked on a fruitless voyage of debate with my anarchic Blacksmith brother this week. Jim lives by his own code and has no truc with mainstream anything, never mind politics. He looks to France with their last great European Revolution as the torch-bearers for the future. ‘Look at them’ he said, eyes wide, pupils dilated. ‘They have superb healthcare (Jim broke his back in a terrible car crash in France ten years ago; the radical actions of a French doctor saved his life and, latterly, his heavy-lift career), sensible regulated housing and, if they don’t like what’s going on they all kick off (meaning they take up their pitchforks and roam the streets seeking justice amidst the acrid tyre smoke).

It’s funny to think now that the French had such influence on the War of Independance. The countries appear at times as chalk and cheese, but clearly their lust for liberty was forged in the same fire. Do France have a constitution as such? Would it be fair to say that the bold words of the US version are now so gnarled and twisted by greedheads and nest-featherers as to render the noble original impotent?

In Britain we need strong leadership through a consensus of the brightest minds; an all-star team of politicians, law-makers and economists to guide us through this threatening storm and map a route to a more equitable future. I favour an election but not one that sees Browns finally slinking off into the night; rather one that delivers coalition, where the great and the good from all sides come together much as the House did under Churchill in wartime. With the media pressure off him GB might just hit top form, working alongside Vince Cable, soothsayer and truth-weilder of the Liberal Democrats.

Roads, no one shook their head more violently than I when I heard that goggled buffoon bestow false accolade on the pair I prefer to think of as Laurel and Hardy. Oliver Hardy was always a somewhat doomed figure, wasn’t he? Stan always got the laughs – he only had to toussle his hair in that bemused way of his and we fell about. But Stan’s long gone on the boot-filling circuit and Ollie’s exposed in all his befuddled corpulence, caught in the glare of the arc lamps and working his way through an ever-shifting script with B-list support and an anarchic crew.

I fear no matter the man’s good heart, those fierce critics in the one-and-nines will soon be shouting ‘cut!’ And then we’ll find out what it’s like to have a man with no plan in the hot seat.

I could trash Nixon all day, but I will spare you. He was a crook and a criminal and I never thought anyone would surpass him but in my opinion, W did. He was a crook and criminal too but was evil as well. And I don’t use that word lightly.

I feel sorry for Brown. He really seems stuck between the ole rock and a hard place. What do you both think of his proposed reforms? Is a written constitution needed? I suppose he could live with being Ringo so long as he doesn’t become Pete Best.

The disenfranchised young, while common to our countries, are also common — dangerously so — in the middle east. Conventional wisdom on this side of the pond is that is why the Taliban were able to make such inroads.

Mi casa es su casa, sweder, although if there is any luck and mercy in this world (or as we say here, good lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise) I will be back in the Washington area a year from now. So instead of the brutal winter killing you 5 months a year and a hot and humid summer killing you for 2, you’ll have ridiculously hot and humid for 6 months and a few brutal days in winter. Life’s just one big trade-off sometimes.

But he’s taking on a series of Hurculean tasks, fending off a hostile media baying for blood, a power-crazed opposition who brazenly use the perceived failings of the government to smoke screen their own lack of cohesive policy, a Europe in economic meltdown, disloyalty in his ranks and, what may finally scupper his chances, a public weary, beaten and eager to see someone hung out to dry for their woes.

Bono, refering to Live8 and their public pursuit of solutions for Africa, famously compared the Blair/ Brown axis to Lennon and McCartney. In 12 short months at the helm Gordon has managed to resemble Ringo. That may actually defame the former Mr Barbara Bach.

As Roads has said, Gordon Brown is at heart a good man who wants to change the world. Sadly, just at the moment, he looks as if he’s carrying it on his back.

Ella, it does seem a tranche of youth in the so-called civilised world – in the UK/ US in particular – is disenfranchised, out of control and damned. I can’t see how we pull it back. Badly or un-educated parents, themselves often in trouble (with the law and in it’s quaint ‘polite society’ meaning as in a young girl with child) from an early age, are the bulk of the problem. Stir in visual media-driven envy-idols – get-rich-quick ‘reality’ TV, ubiquitous ads showing ‘perfect’ people living the good life without any apparent toil – with a generous helping of teachers bound in red tape and PC directives and you have a wriggling, jiggling sack full of monkeys to contend with. We desperately need YouthManagement 2.0.

Nixon – ah, dear old Tricky Dicky, arch-nemesis of my good friend Raoul Duke. Dr Gonzo spoke of the Kennedy debate in his Campaign Trail series. He also wrote a stunning obit for Rolling Stone where he said of Nixon ‘He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.’ In consideration of Nixon being a navy man and therefore perhaps buried at sea Thompson said ‘ He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.’

As we say in these parts, harsh but fair.

The BNP result shames all mainstream UK parties. Griffin and his brownshirts didn’t gain votes (there numbers were comensurate with previous Euro MP elections), they scored a higher percentage of the total thanks to the low turnout. That itself was partly in protest at what voters here see as illicit profligacy by MPs at a time of hardship. It’s also,sadly, down to general voter apathy. Oh, how we need a man or woman of conviction to stand up and be counted!

I pondered the possibility of a maverick rising from the swill when comparisons with the Great Depression were made last January. The 30′s saw dreadful struggles in America and Europe but it was this side of the pond that a visionary stood up and proclaimed a new and righteous future. We all know too well where that lead.

I’d like to believe that couldn’t happen again, at least not so soon, but if history holds any lesson for us it is that our leaders rarely study – or learn from – history.

I’ve thought long and hard about donning my rat-suit and diving off the smoking, listing Good Ship Britain. If the BNP make subtantial gains come the ‘real’ election – in the next 12 months – make up the spare bed; I and my loved ones are out of here.

The streets of my own country run awash with similarly brain-dead youngsters on a Saturday night. Too much freely-available cheap alcohol and not enough stringent parenting, the latter a cause of a good many ills around here.

That’s marvellous, Sweder — you’re not the only one who thinks that way. Take a look at this:

What is happening to our young people? They are disrespectful to their elders and they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

Sounds familiar? Yes — and it seems that things really aren’t improving. That’s Plato’s highly perplexed description of the youth of ancient Greece, written in the 4th century BC…

The streets of my own country run awash with similarly brain-dead youngsters on a Saturday night. Too much freely-available cheap alcohol and not enough stringent parenting, the latter a cause of a good many ills around here.

When did you move Stateside, Sweder?

It seems as if Brown has survived the EU rout, but lord have mercy, the BNP??? He strikes me as the epitome of a man who’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. And Richard Nixon’s ghost can attest to the importance of image; the majority of people who saw his 1960 debate with JFK on TV (with Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow and perspiration) thought Kennedy won. The majority who listened to it on radio thought Nixon won.

The Middle East and Northern Ireland are both depressing narratives that have gone on far too long. I certainly have no answers but will fall back on my intellecutal laziness of quoting a lyric: “It started out quite simply, as complex things can do.” Don McLean.

Of course the underlying emotions are worrying but I say again, nothing not to be found ingrained in Irish society, even (to a lesser extent perhaps) today. The ‘Real IRA’ continue to ‘wage war’ against the ‘opressors’ (or more frequently those seperated from them by religious allegiance). The difference now is that their former brothers-in-arms, now occupying democratically elected office, are quite happy to assist the authorities to expose their disaffected brethren. A nod, as the Pythhons liked to say, is as good as a wink to a blind bat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/8089674.stm

There’s no clear evidence to suggest that Messrs McGuinness or Adams had any part to play in this latest announcement, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

As Roads points out the complex situation in the Middle East makes the Irish question seem almost simple. All that means is the aftermath of any nogotiated peace will be peppered by more acts of ugliness and violence purportrated by those who have a vested interest in prolonging hatred, wether through indoctrination or refusal to change. There will be more of them and they’ll be harder to identify, but they’ll be born of the same style of entrenched-view heirlooms, the product of seeing too many friends and relatives wounded and killed over the years, or for the younger ones, hearing fireside tales of demonic infidels stalking the land.

Roads is right too about our own beleaguered PM. Brown may lack the social skills apparently essential in a modern premier, yet his worth to his people is so much greater than that of slippery Sarkozy or the nefarious Merkl. Gordon reminds me of the Bull That Would Not Die; surrounded by cowardly, jeering Matadors, journalist’s quills hanging from his bloodied nape, sides slashed by glancing Blairite blades, the bull-ring sand spattered with spilled blood; yet still he comes, nostrils flared, determined to root out his tormentors and charge head-long into the global economic fray. Perhaps I could pursuade Ralph Steadman to work that up for the press; he’d do a grand job.

We’ll have to see how he fares. I for one sincerely hope he survives; we sure as hell don’t have anyone remotely better waiting in the wings over here.

The tragedy is that Brown has many of the same policies and all of the conviction that Obama has. He’s a leader with plenty of courage, but sadly without the communication skills.

Panache helps vision go a long way in politics, provided you don’t confuse one with the other. Just ask Tony Blair.